Soonmin Bae

Where did you grow up:

I was born in Seoul, South Korea and had lived in South Korea before I got here, except staying in Canada for a year as an exchange student.

What was your academic path before coming to grad school at MIT?

I did undergrad at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Applied Mathematics and Management Engineering(a sort of business). Also I studied at Kyunggi Science High School in South Korea.

What department are you currently working in, and when did you start there?

I started my grad program in June, 2003 in EECS.

What are you working on and why are you passionate about it?

I'm working on Computational Photography and Video, which is the convergence of computer graphics, computer vision, and image processing. Studying how human understand visual information and reproducing the scene's appearance have been challenges to me since I started drawing plaster models of cylinders, pyramids or spheres to express three-dimensional figures on a sheet of paper and drawing glass bottles or flowing rivers, attempting to capture their transparent characteristics during my childhood.

What are your future plans?

My aspiration is to become a well-balanced professor who leads cutting-edge research and who coaches and motivates students to study.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

I like playing sports, including pingpong, figure skating, snow-boarding, tennis, basketball, swimming, and so on. Also I like traveling that I try to visit a new country every year and have been to 13 countries. I like singing and dancing and that I often lead a worship team and used to be in a choir.